About Me

Buford C. Terrell
Controlled substances laws and their consequences have been the center of my professional life for over fifteen years. I host a public interest television program in Houston, “Drugs, Crime, and Politics” , produced by the Drug Policy forum of Texas, and have done so for most of its ten-year history. Before my retirement, I taught a seminar, “Controlled Substances Law” for many years at South Texas College of Law.
In this blog I intend to explore the features and consequences of those laws, especially the unintended consequences, and look at the need for, and possibility of, changing them. Don’t expect a lot of breaking news or current events, although there will be some. My approach will be more historical and theoretical. I hope to get a lot of criticism – good, bad, and otherwise – and to start some good, heated discussions.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Paregoric

Paregoric

It
eased infant colic.It soothed a baby’s
teething pains.It even calmed so that a
frazzled mother could get some sleep.They called it “Mother’s Little Helper”.

It
is paregoric, a six percent tincture of opium.For over a century, until the 1950s[1], it was a standby in the
medicine cabinets of untold numbers of American families and the go-to remedy
when their children got sick.For the
first half of the twentieth century, paregoric was to the diaper set what
laudanum had been to adults in the nineteenth. (See my earlier post, “Did
Everyone Use Opium?”)

Once
in the late 1940s, my family went on our annual camping trip in the mountains
of New Mexico.My little sister, who
would have been five or six years old at the time, got diarrhea, and we drove
to Santa Fe to get some medicine for her.Mom and Dad discovered that, contrary to the practice back home in
Texas, the drug store would not sell them paregoric without a prescription.We ended up taking her to a hospital
emergency room.If you ask your
grandparents – or probably great-grandparents by now – they will probably have
paregoric stories of their own.

The
story of paregoric is fascinating by itself, and I hope someone tells it
soon.But it is also valuable for its
intersection with three other narratives.

The
first is with drug Prohibition itself.Opiates were strictly regulated and limited beginning with the Harrison
Act in 1914, and heroin was completely banned by two statutes in the 1920s.Yet paregoric remained freely available for
another quarter century after that.And
its regulation then came, not through the drug-control laws, but indirectly
through the control of licit drugs by the institution of prescription
requirements.

The second is the contrast between paregoric
use and the hysteria starting with the hype about “crack babies”.Soon after the crack cocaine scare broke out
in the 1980s, alarmists raised the alarm about babies severely damaged by the
pre-natal cocaine use by their mothers.Although the crack baby myth was quickly rebutted, many still insist on
pre-natal drug testing of expectant women and fret about the harms drug-using
women are doing to their awaited children.

The
third parallel may be the most important.Controversy has arisen about medical use of marijuana by children in
states that have approved medical use by adults[2].In several states courts have ordered the
removal of children from the custody of parents who use, or even possess,
marijuana even if it is for that parent’s medical use.Almost everyone will agree that opiate use
presents greater dangers (while still small on an absolute scale) to users of
any age than does marijuana use.If more
than a century of relatively heavy paregoric use by children created no more
problems than the history reveals, then the conclusion should be that limited
marijuana use would be even safer.To
this can be added the safe record of use of amphetamines (Dexedrine: Adderall,
methamphetamine: Desoxyn) for children with attention spectrum disorders.

Sometimes
the rearview mirror shows us that the bumps in the road ahead are smaller than
those in the road already traveled, and the dawn’s sunlight will dispel the
monsters lurking under the bed.A good
dose of paregoric may cure some of the Drug War illness.

[1]
The federal Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act (the statutory foundation of the FDA)
was amended then to require a signed doctor’s prescription for the dispensing
of some drugs, creating the distinction between prescription and
over-the-counter medicines.The change
had been requested by states troubled by abuse of Benzedrine (amphetamine)
inhalers.Although some states already
had prescription laws for some drugs (primarily opiates), these amendments
created national uniformity.

[2]
Today (8/16/13) Governor Christie of New Jersey vetoed a bill that would have
extended the right to use (with parental consent) to minors.

1 comment:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50153205nChris Christie: Medical marijuana OK for childrenNew Jersey has joined 19 other states in allowing adults to use marijuana use for medical reasons. Gov. Chris Christie announced he will also permit children under 18 to use edible marijuana for certain diseases. Terrell Brown reports.

vs

Governor Christie of New Jersey vetoed a bill that would have extended the right to use (with parental consent) to minors.